A little further on we have: ‘Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, shakes his money together, and begins again.’ Originally we had: ‘Mr. Datchery stops in his counting, finds he has counted wrong, and begins again.’ Very near the end of this chapter we have: ‘At length he rises, throws open the door of a corner cupboard, and refers to a few uncouth chalked strokes on its inner side.’ Dickens first wrote: ‘At length he rises, throws open the door of a corner cupboard, and refers to a few chalked strokes on its inner side.’ CHAPTER II—EXTERNAL TESTIMONIES We now proceed to give such external testimony as exists of the plans and intentions of Dickens. The chief authority is, of course, the _Life_ by Forster. We have in addition the testimony of Madame Perugini, whose first husband, Charles Allston Collins, designed the wrapper. To this we add the testimony of Charles Dickens the younger as conveyed to his sister. Through the kindness of Miss Bessie Hatton I have been able to read the text of the unacted play written by Joseph Hatton and Charles Dickens the younger on _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. We have also the important letter of Sir Luke Fildes, who was chosen by Dickens to illustrate the story. It seems essential to any complete consideration of the subject that these testimonies should be given in full, and this is the more necessary because some of them are now not readily at hand. JOHN FORSTER’S TESTIMONY Dickens in 1868 had been alarming his friends and exhausting himself by his public Readings. When he was in America on his last Reading tour he had made a profit of about £20,000. He entered into an agreement with Messrs. Chappell to give a final course of Readings in this country, from which he expected to receive an additional £13,000. The strain of his work in America had manifestly told upon him. ‘There was manifest abatement of his natural force, the elasticity of bearing was impaired, and the wonderful brightness of eye was dimmed at times.’ Unfavourable and alarming symptoms of nerve mischief were also noted, but he drew lavishly on his reserve strength, and thinking that a new excitement was needed he chose the _Oliver Twist_ murder, one of the most trying of his public recitals. He suffered ‘thirty thousand shocks to the nerves’ going to Edinburgh. His Readings and his journeyings exacted from him the most terrible physical exertion, but no warnings could arrest his course till his physicians peremptorily ordered him to desist. Even then, however, he resumed his Readings at a later date. In this condition of mental and bodily fatigue Dickens began his last book. I print almost in full the relative passages from Forster. The last book undertaken by Dickens was to be published in illustrated monthly numbers, of the old form, but to close with the twelfth. It closed, unfinished, with the sixth number, which was itself underwritten by two pages.